sody._]

But it is a matter of quite other importance that, as has been said,
lighter mediaeval literature generally, and the _chansons_ in
particular, were meant for the ear, not the eye--to be heard, not to
be read. For this intention very closely concerns some of their most
important literary characteristics. It is certain as a matter of fact,
though it might not be very easy to account for it as a matter of
argument, that repetitions, stock phrases, identity of scheme and
form, which are apt to be felt as disagreeable in reading, are far
less irksome, and even have a certain attraction, in matter orally
delivered. Whether that slower irritation of the mind through the ear
of which Horace speaks supplies the explanation may be left
undiscussed. But it is certain that, especially for uneducated hearers
(who in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, if not in the thirteenth,
must have been the enormous majority), not merely the phraseological
but the rhythmical peculiarities of the _chansons_ would be specially
suitable. In particular, the long maintenance of the mono-rhymed, or
even the single-assonanced, _tirade_ depends almost entirely upon its
being delivered _viva voce_. Only then does that wave-clash which has
been spoken of produce its effect, while the unbroken uniformity of
rhyme on the printed page, and the apparent absence of uniformity in
the printed assonances, are almost equally annoying to the eye. Nor is
it important or superfluous to note that this oral literature had, in
the Teutonic countries and in England more especially, an immense
influence (hitherto not nearly enough allowed for by literary
historians) in the great change from a stressed and alliterative to a
quantitative and rhymed prosody, which took place, with us, from about
1200 A.D. Accustomed as were the ears of all to quantitative (though
very licentiously quantitative) and rhymed measures in the hymns and
services of the Church--the one literary exercise to which gentle and
simple, learned and unlearned, were constantly and regularly
addicted--it was almost impossible that they should not demand a
similar prosody in the profaner compositions addressed to them. That
this would not affect the _chansons_ themselves is true enough; for
there are no relics of any alliterative prosody in French, and its
accentual scanning is only the naturally "crumbled" quantity of Latin.
But it is extremely important to note that the metre of these
_chansons_